Past Programs | Directions to Casa Libre

Edge 75: a Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers
w/Teré Fowler-Chapman, Estella Gonzalez, & Margaret Regan

Curator: Melissa Buckheit Melissa Buckheit's Bio

A note from the curator: I have often wanted to listen to authors who are in the same place in their career as myself--emerging, published in journals, with a chapbook and/or a first full-length book, still growing but full of passion, new ideas, and an edge. But there is often infrequent opportunity for this; in fact, I have often felt disappointed in the lack, that such an open community might often be circumscribed in its literary programming.  Additionally, featuring emerging writers engages other young as well as established writers, to support, frequent and attend Casa Libre and other writing events. This cycle creates the foundation for a writing community which self-generates, remains true, open, and allows many voices the opportunity for visibility and being heard. I want Tucson to be an artistic community which includes and features many voices and peoples. Literature is the province of communication, but also reflectivity, the reflection and representation of all our narratives and of new narratives and ideas, voices which are challenging and also challenge us.

Wednesday, April 22
7:30 p.m.
Suggested Donation: $5

Come to Edge: A Reading Series of Emerging and Younger Writers. Edge is a series of local and national writers and cross-genre artists, emphasizing diversity of narrative, identity and literary source. Its purpose is to create community, visibility and voice for emerging and younger writers. Broadsheets of the authors' work will accompany each reading. Books and journals will be available for purchase and signing by the authors. Refreshments will be available after the reading.

Readers

Teré Fowler-Chapman is a writer, teaching artist, actor, and lecturer who has been attracting audiences since 2012. Her breadth of performances include: Black Life Matters Conference, Poets for Ferguson, Voices de La Calle, the award winning play Octagon, and featuring alongside jazz genius Clark Coolidge. Her work has been archived in the University of Arizona's audio library VOCA. Her current and forthcoming publications are: Feminist Wire, Literary Orphans, and the photography book A Beautiful Body. She is the first African American Executive Director for the Tucson Poetry Festival and proud board member of the local reading series, POG. In addition, Teré is the brainchild and director of TucsonLit, the city’s first and only literary event aggregator, as well as the founder and host of Words on the Avenue, an open mic she designed to provide a poetic platform and safe space for her community. Her spoken word album, titled Womyn Child, debuted in Fall 2014. Teré currently lives in Tucson where she is a high school poetry teacher. When she isn't gracing the stage, planning her next big project, or engaging classrooms she is spending time with her loving partner and two dogs.

 

Estella Gonzalez was born and raised in East Los Angeles, which inspires most of her writing. Her work has appearedin Puerto del Sol and Huizache and has been anthologized in Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature published by Bilingual Press.  She received a “Special Mention” in the The Pushcart Prize XXXVIII: Best of the Small Presses 2014 Edition and was selected a “Reading Notable” for The Best American Non-Required Reading 2011. Currently, she serves as a contributing editor for Kweli Journal.

 

 

Photo by: Jay Rochlin

Tucson journalist Margaret Regan has just published her second book, Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire (Beacon Press). In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it "intimate and heartbreaking...For those who have been looking for an authentic look at people caught between borders, this is it." The nonfiction book details what happens when undocumented immigrants who've lived in the United States for years suddenly have their lives upended when they're caught, by federal ICE or Border Patrol agents, or -- in Arizona in the age of 1070 -- by local police. Zeroing in on Arizona, Margaret tells anguished stories of family separation, detailing how immigrant parents are wrenched from their children when they’re locked up in Eloy, a notorious for-profit detention center run by the Corrections Corporation of America, or unceremoniously deported to Nogales. Margaret is also the author of The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands (Beacon Press, 2010), a prizewinning book about the tragedy of migrant deaths in the Arizona desert. Used in many university classrooms, The Death of Josseline won the 2013 Al Filipov Peace and Justice Award and was a 2010 Southwest Book of the Year. A writer for the Tucson Weekly since 1990, Margaret has won dozens of journalism awards -- for border reporting, for stories on the Irish in Arizona and for arts criticism. She also reports on the arts for The Buckmaster Show, KVOI AM 1030, and, in 2013, she branched out into the art world, co-curating A World Separated by Borders, an exhibition of border photographs by Alejandra Platt-Torres at the Arizona State Museum. Margaret’s writing has been published in the Washington Post, Newsday, Black + White, Photovision, and many regional and local publications.

Next Edge Reading will be held May 20.

March 2015

Feb 2015

Jan 2015

Dec 2014

Nov 2014

Oct 2014

Sept 2014

July 2014

June 2014

May 2014

Apr 2014

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